


Hyperion

by corngold



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Holiday, Humor, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 11:03:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/925611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corngold/pseuds/corngold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After years fighting against the Federation, a holiday might not fix everything, but it's a start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hyperion

**Author's Note:**

> An AU in which none of the characters died or otherwise left the Liberator.
> 
> This started from of an entirely frivolous conversation with Elviaprose, who also did a fabulous job betaing the thing, suggesting dialogue, and whipping a very tired Blake into shape. This fic, then, naturally owes quite a bit to that conversation and to her, and also to all the many excellent B7 holiday!trope fics which have come before it.

~*~

Hyperion One is outside the Federation—not far enough to be truly comfortable but, as Cally points out, such a distance does not exist.

"You approve, then?" Blake asks her.

"I do," she answers.  "It's been far too long since we had a proper holiday."

"And mind you, 'proper' means more than one day long," Vila calls out.  He doesn't look up; his attention is engaged on the glass he's filling with adrenaline and soma.

"One week," Cally suggests to Blake.

"Five days," he offers.

"Six," Vila says.

 

~*~

 

Avon shoots Blake a smile, a favourite in his arsenal: one which promises charm and offers only threat.  Blake looks up at it briefly before his eyes flicker away again. 

"And what good deed have I done," Avon drawls, "to deserve such a reward?  Was it saving your life on Sillyriat?  Or a week later on Athenum?  Or before that, perhaps, on Trinium Dodge."

"Trinium Dodge was your own fault, Avon," Dayna points out from her place on the couch.  She moves a knight forward and grins at Jenna, who sits facing her across the chess board.

"Think of it as a thank you for all of them, if you like."  Blake is standing at the controls, watching over Tarrant's shoulder as he lays in the course.  "And we'll be sticking together the whole time; it's safest that way."

"Not much of a holiday in that case then, is it, Blake?"

Jenna sends a knave skidding across the board to take the knight, and then smiles wryly as she sees the trap a moment too late.  Dayna takes the knave, leaving her queen a free path to checkmate. 

"Be fair, Avon."  Jenna tips her king and looks up to grin at him.  "We'd all enjoy a holiday from you just as much."

Avon's smile twists.

 

~*~

 

Orac chooses the rooms and dummies the deposits back through five holding accounts.  The first day none of them make it beyond the walls of the hotel.  Jenna and Cally sunbathe by one of a dozen gold-tinged swimming pools—Jenna in a skimpy swimming costume, Cally in a sensible one-piece hidden almost completely under a sarong.  Blake joins them under an umbrella, with a paperback.  He opens it, sets it jacket-up on his chest, shuts his eyes and falls asleep instantly. 

Vila finds a spa and spends six hours with a bevy of attractive young women who soak his hands and feet and buff his nails and paint mud on his legs and face and place slices of a local cactus over his eyes.  Later he tells anyone who'll listen that it was six hours of pure heaven.  Avon and Soolin remain in their rooms, reading, and only appear for meals; Gan naps and Dayna tracks down a masseuse. 

Tarrant sits at the bar, orders the most colourful drink he can find on the menu, and asks the barman what there is to do around these parts.  He ends up chatting with the man for the rest of the day, and only when the rest of them drift through on their way to dinner do they succeed in prying him away.

"Well then?" Avon asks, looking at Blake across the elaborate central dish, which seems to be some kind of cross between a lobster and a squid: large and red, with antlers and tentacles everywhere.

"Well?" Blake echoes.  One of the antlers stands between them and, from where Avon is sitting, bisects his face neatly.

"What have you planned for tomorrow, then?  Or do you plan, as ever, to keep us in the dark until the last possible moment?"

"There's enough to do to keep us all occupied for months; it seems a shame to waste it indoors."  Blake ignores the jibe, his voice mild.  "I thought excursions, in twos or threes."

"Safety first," Avon quips.

"What's the use of a holiday if you're dead, Avon?" Soolin asks, amused.

Avon tilts his head; he doesn’t take his eyes off Blake.  Blake takes a bite of the lobster squid.

"It's good," he tells him.

 

~*~

 

"There are some wonderful museums in the old city," Gan says the next morning over breakfast.  "Would anyone like to join me?"

"Only if I'm allowed to make off with one or two pieces," Vila says, looking only marginally hopeful.

"You're not," Jenna tells him.

"I'll go," Blake says, wiping his mouth with his napkin.

Blake, Gan finds, is a pleasant companion in a museum.  He trails alongside, looking everything over with an expression of polite interest that suggests his thoughts are elsewhere, but Gan doesn't mind.  Blake never grows tired or complains of boredom, and is perfectly willing to move on or stop as long as Gan wishes at each display.

They pause between museums for lunch, and meet Dayna and Avon in line at an ice cream parlour.  Dayna orders hazelnut and offers Gan a taste when he hesitates; he complains that it's much too sweet and orders peach sorbet with peanut brittle, and she laughs. 

When the boy behind the counter asks what flavour he'd like, Blake shrugs and orders a scoop of chocolate.  Avon, standing just behind him, promptly orders vanilla.

They sit in the sunlit plaza and people-watch and eat ice cream.  Avon is looking more like the Avon of old, in grey slacks and a white shirt.  It is after all, Blake reflects, far too warm here for the white-trimmed black leather that's become his standard dress over the past several years. 

 

~*~

 

Having spent the first two days lounging indolently in the sun, Jenna informs them over breakfast the next morning that she plans to spend their third day doing something more invigorating. 

Tarrant, marmalade-slathered toast half-way to his mouth, looks up with a raised eyebrow and a rakish grin and says, "Oh?" 

Jenna smirks and invites him to join her, and he accepts with a look of delighted anticipation.  Any of the others around the breakfast table could warn him not to expect what he is so obviously hoping for.  None of them do.

To his surprise she drags him out into the day, laughing when he expresses confusion.  She jokes that she'd had rather more interesting things in mind than spending the day in bed. 

"Are you game or not?" she asks. 

And Tarrant has never been one to back down from a challenge.

By the end of the day he rather wishes he were.  When at last he staggers back into the hotel and finds the others sitting around the dinner table, it's all he can do to collapse into a chair and ferry food from his plate to his mouth without losing too much of it to the plush carpet under the table.

"Busy day?" Cally asks.

"Did Jenna wear you out?"  Dayna's smile is wicked.  "I'd always thought you had more stamina, Tarrant."

"So did I," Tarrant agrees, through a bite of some kind of baked tomato and cheese casserole.  "I defy anyone to keep up with her."  The casserole is close to the best thing he's ever tasted, and he reaches out to drag the dish closer.  "We did _everything_ : spelunking, base jumping, parasailing—"

Jenna, laughing, sits next to him.  "I had half a dozen other things in mind besides," she tells him. 

"I can't begin to imagine," he says, fervently.  "I think I'm going to be recovering from today for the rest of the week."

"A shame," she says, eyes sparkling.  "I was hoping to go dancing tomorrow night."

"Perhaps you'll have to look elsewhere for a partner, Jenna," Avon says, with delicate relish, "and for one less easily breakable."

Tarrant does his best to sit up straight in his chair and glare at Avon.  "I'm sure I'll be recovered enough by tomorrow night."

Avon smirks.

 

~*~

 

The next day Blake and Gan state their intention of visiting the only two museums they haven't already managed to see, and Cally bullies Vila into leaving the restorative hands of the spa workers and joining them. 

It is just as stimulating an experience as Vila had expected it to be, which is to say: not much.  Five minutes in he decides to entertain himself working out how he might steal each of the pieces they pass.  He is considering the possibility of smuggling out a small platinum vase in his shirt and, if successful in that, whether he could persuade either Avon or Orac into helping him fence it, when raised voices distract his attention. 

Blake, having overheard the lecture of a nearby tour guide and apparently found it inaccurate, has jumped in to correct him, applying his particular style of even-voiced charisma to the argument.  The tour guide is no more immune to it than most of the rest of the galaxy, but he's obviously quite accustomed to his own speech, and unaccustomed to having it refuted.  Looking simultaneously impressed by Blake's knowledge and poleaxed by his nerve, he sputters indignant protests. 

Blake merely raises his eyebrows and turns on the quiet fire.  Everyone else within fifteen feet of the group, including Gan, Cally, and the tour guide, are instantly enraptured.

Vila listens with half an ear and shuffles from foot to foot, until he realises that each shuffle is carrying him gradually farther and farther away.  It seems his feet feel that not even an impassioned Roj Blake can make art history interesting.  Admitting that his feet are often right about such things, he gives up and slips away.

He plans to return to the hotel but the day is beautiful and his plans are derailed.  He settles down at a small wrought-iron table outside a classy bar and orders a lychee martini.  He takes a large mouthful and is preparing to swallow it and sigh contentedly when a hand settles on the back of his neck, delicate fingers and their long nails trailing through his hair.

"Hello Vila."

Of course his mouthful of delicious martini goes everywhere but down his throat.  Servalan produces a large white handkerchief and wipes down the seat of the second chair before sitting in it, lacing her fingers together on the table, and smiling at him.

" _So_ lovely to see you again, Vila."

"Wish I could say the same," Vila says, taking another drink for stability.  "What are you doing here?  How'd you find me?"

"I assure you, I merely stumbled across you.  Simple good fortune, you might say." 

"I might, but you know I doubt it somehow." 

She's wearing yards of silver; it's almost blinding in the sun.  Vila looks about surreptitiously for any signs of imminent arrest, but there are no officers in sight. 

"Where are the others?  Blake?  Avon?  Tarrant?"  Her smile is caressing.

Vila's glass is empty.  He laughs and shakes a finger at her nervously.

"You can't arrest us, Servalan.  This is a neutral planet!  You can't go hauling us off it."

"Oh, Vila, we've been playing this game far too long for you to be so naïve.  But you are in luck, this time.  I have an engagement in thirty minutes, one I cannot miss—not even," she says, "for the _Liberator._ "

"You can be sure we won't hold it against you," Vila mutters, with another quick glance around.

"I'm so glad."  She smirks.  "And there's no need to look so nervous.  We are quite alone.  Though you may be sure I'll be informing my flotilla of your presence as soon as I am able.  I would suggest, for your sakes, that you be gone by the time they arrive."

"Good of you to let me know," Vila says. 

"In the meantime," she says, and her smiles goes predatory, "you don’t seem to be particularly busy at the moment.  Why don't you buy me a drink, Vila?"

He stares at her wide-eyed, like a mouse confronted with a grinning viper, and tries to prepare himself for what seems to be shaping up into the scariest date in human history.

 

~*~

 

Against all odds, Vila is allowed to return to the hotel in one piece, and with only mild psychological scarring.  He consults Orac at once, who tracks down the flotilla's ships via their computers.  Orac is silent for a few moments—probably for dramatic effect; infuriating computer—and Vila is about to abandon him altogether and run to alert Blake, when Orac makes a brief _ahem_ noise. 

"I have located the flotilla in question," Orac says.  "They have received her communication and are heading this way.  However they are, as of yet, still five days out."

"Who are?" Avon asks, striding through the door.

"Best news I've had all day," Vila says with relief.  "Keep monitoring for us, Orac?  There's a good chap."  He removes the key before Orac can protest this menial task.

When he looks up to explain, however, Avon is frowning at him. "Vila," he says.  "There is lipstick, all over your face."

Horrified, Vila runs to find a mirror and a sink, and decides he'd better not tell Avon after all.

 

~*~

 

Hyperion has one moon, a large, golden thing that circles lazily across the sky, dipping near the horizon before circling back up again.  Jenna dresses in a frock that evening and drags Tarrant out to dance a wild and very friendly bachata.  The floor is a slightly raised stage at the centre of a courtyard.  An open-walled marquee hovers above, glittering with lights.

The moment the music ends, Avon cuts in with a smirk and sweeps Jenna into a tango.  She's in red and gold, Avon's in black and silver.  They slink across the dance floor like sex, and everyone watching swallows hastily over suddenly dry throats.

"Is there anything you and Avon haven't formed a rivalry over?" Blake asks.  His glass of dusky pink wine sits in front of him, warm and untouched.  Tarrant looks at him sideways.

"Maybe one or two things," he says, with uncharacteristic seriousness.  "But only because they're too obvious to ignore."

 

~*~

 

Tarrant spends the next morning alternately sunbathing and swimming laps, while Avon lies back in a deck chair and pretends to read.  Dayna wanders out to join them and, with a cry of horror, dashes back inside to fetch sunscreen lotion for Tarrant.  She is still far too late to keep him from turning the colour of the lobster squid they'd had for dinner their first night, and Avon watches her rub lotion into his burnt shoulders with amusement.  Dayna scolds them both. 

"Bit petty for revenge, isn't it?" Blake murmurs, wandering by on his way to swim.

"Revenge is always satisfying, whether petty or not," Avon answers, with a flash of teeth.

"Is it?"  Blake asks mildly, and starts to go.

"Blake," Avon calls after him, instinctively.

Blake turns, raising an enquiring eyebrow, and catches Avon's gaze wrenching from Blake's bare chest up to focus on his eyes.  The sun feels a sudden two degrees warmer.  Avon has to work to keep his expression calm and neat.

He's not sure why he called Blake back.

"You didn't dance last night," he says finally.

"Is that your way of asking for a dance, Avon?" Blake asks, aggressively flippant.  "You seemed happy enough with Jenna."

He regrets it the moment he says it: shuts his eyes and curses irrational jealousy.  Turns and leaves Avon still blinking with surprise.

 

~*~

 

Tarrant spends the afternoon under a tissue regenerator, and no amount of cajoling can get Vila out of the spa.  Cally goes hiking in a forest of redwoods as large as planet hoppers; Jenna goes along with her, happy enough to be out of doors and moving.  Soolin and Dayna make a trip to the new city's outdoor market, and Gan and Blake share lunch and play Tellian checkers.  Avon sits a short distance from them and purchases, opens, and consumes a bottle of very fine purple-black wine.  Blake moves his pieces across the board haphazardly, watching out of the corner of one eye as the bottle slowly empties.  Avon's gaze burns into the back of his head.

Perhaps it is the wine that makes Avon agree to go out variable-gravity paintballing with Soolin, when she returns that afternoon and suggests it.  He puts on an air of dangerous nonchalance and says, "Why not?" but his eyes glitter.  He dresses in very plain black and Soolin in dark grey, and they leave together.

Gan visits a library and Dayna goes with him; they don’t return until evening.  Blake wanders down through the old city alone, despite his rule about going everywhere in pairs.  The sky is the palest blue-green and sprinkled with tiny white clouds.  Hyperion shines down and off the yellow stones of the plaza; the moon, merely a faint gold disc during the day, looms near the southern horizon.  He sits at the edge of the fountain at the plaza's centre and allows himself, just for a moment, to imagine stopping here.

 

~*~

 

Tarrant is up and off his bed of pain when Blake returns, although he admits he'd better avoid direct sunlight for now.  His smile is self-deprecating; his nose is still a little pink.  They open a bottle of white wine and sit in the shade of a wisteria-covered trellis and look out over a stunning view of the valley below them.

"At this rate we'll be needing another holiday, to recover from the holiday," Tarrant jokes.

Blake chuckles and stares out at the planet before them.  A silvery thread of river twists down the centre of the valley and vanishes among miles of untouched forest.  There are no birds in the sky.

"She's quite a lady," Tarrant says. 

Blake follows Tarrant's gaze and sees Jenna and Cally on a narrow road below them, returning from their hike.

"She is."  Blake sips at his wine.

"Not going to warn me off?"

"No."  Blake smiles.  "Jenna is more than a match for you.  I'd be better off warning her not to damage you too badly."

"I think I would have made some sort of protest, before."  Tarrant shifts in his seat and winces at stiff muscles.  "But after yesterday I think I'm inclined to agree with you."

"You're young yet," Blake tells him.  He refills Tarrant's glass.  "You'll keep up."

Tarrant snorts.  "Your confidence in me is heart-warming."

Blake stretches his legs out in front of him and lets his head fall against the chair back, closing his eyes with contentment.  It's perfectly quiet; a soft breeze tosses the wisteria and insects drone faintly somewhere nearby.  Jenna's laugh floats up to them from the distance.

"Nice to have some time away from Avon, isn't it?" Tarrant says, with purpose.  The world goes stiller.

"It is, I suppose," Blake answers evenly.  "I'm sure he's enjoying it just as much."

"You've been avoiding each other ever since we arrived on this planet," Tarrant tells him.  "I know it's not something you want to talk about—"  
  
"Perhaps you'd better leave it alone, then," Blake interrupts, startling himself with the force of it.  Evidently not Tarrant, though, because he just says, sounding even more determined,

"No, I'm sorry, Blake.  You two have been especially impossible around each other for months.  It has to stop."

Blake thinks back, back over the years to the early days.  He'd enjoyed fighting with Avon.  Enjoyed the mutual fury and admiration that had tugged them, even though they'd hardly known each other, from separate corners of a room to stand close and bicker into each other's faces. 

Enjoyed the way Avon had grinned at him, eyes alight, whenever either one of them had landed a hit. 

They've kept up the practice for more than five years.  It's so habitual that Blake hardly even notices anymore.  So habitual that it's become stale.  There's an undercurrent of frustration now, to their arguments.  The barbs are harsher, and Blake just wants to stop, to break their stasis and reach out. 

He rarely touches Avon anymore.  It hurts too much when Avon refuses to step away.

"What would you suggest I do?" Blake says finally.

"Had you considered a straightforward approach?" Tarrant asks.

Blake smiles, weary and amused.  "Did you have something in mind?"

"I can think of a few things."

Blake shakes his head, opens his eyes, reaches out for his glass.  He drains it and Tarrant refills it.  It sits on the wicker table between them.

"If you want something, Blake," Tarrant tells him, "you have to try for it, at least."

 

~*~

 

The rest of their group have straggled back by the time Avon and Soolin return, dishevelled and spattered in paint.  Avon has green and yellow on his shoulders, orange on his thigh, purple in his hair, and a manic grin on his face.  He excuses himself and heads to his room, exuding intense self-satisfaction.  Vila, stumbling out of the spa with a dreamy smile, notes Avon's expression and steps back in alarm.

"You should have seen him when we were actually there," Soolin tells them.  She's not quite as colourful a picture as Avon, but at least one or two people had gotten in some good shots at her.  A patch of red paint covers her hip like blood.  "It was terrifying," she continues dispassionately.  "We took out every other player in the set; that they'd take one look at his face and run for their lives only made it easier."

Blake imagines being faced with Avon, a gun in his hand and insanity in his eyes, and feels an odd shiver of horror.

They return to the dance floor that evening.  Avon and Jenna partner again, both of them superb and both obviously showing off, but after only one dance they separate and make their way back toward the others.   

"Well?" Tarrant asks, voice low.  Blake, sitting next to him, doesn't answer.

Tarrant sweeps Jenna away.  Soolin tugs Dayna onto the floor and they work their way toward the edge of the crowd, eventually vanishing entirely into the night.  Cally asks Blake to dance.  He agrees but suggests they wait for something slow, telling her he's not much of a dancer, and she sits cheerfully beside him.  She's just drawn him into a discussion of the paintings they'd seen the day before when Avon, a wicked grin on his face, drags her away and into a two-step. 

Blake carefully doesn't watch.  He does notice, though, when the music turns soft again and he and Cally move gently around the other couples, that Avon sits in Blake's now-vacant chair, eyes fixed on them.

 

~*~

 

Early the next morning Gan, Vila, Dayna and Soolin head down to the new city and an open air market.  Jenna and Tarrant do not reappear for breakfast, and Cally excuses herself from the table after only a few minutes, saying she would like to spend their last day quietly reading.

Blake takes a deep breath.  "Take a walk with me, Avon?"

In the opposite direction from the valley lies an ocean of silvery blue water.  They leave the hotel and stroll toward it, along the bluffs.  The weather is still perfect, the sky clear, though distant clouds lie over the water, and the sea crashes into the cliffs, sending salty spray into the air.  Blake isn't sure what he wants to say, or even whether he wants to say anything.  But he knows he ought to; Tarrant had been right about that.

Even so, he is determined to give them this: an easy walk in silence, a beautiful view, and the open possibility for either, at a moment's notice, to turn and walk away from the other.

"Where to after this, then?" Avon asks finally.

"I hadn't thought about it," Blake says.  Avon shoots him a sharp glance.

"I meant after we leave Hyperion One."

"I hadn't thought about that either," Blake admits.

Avon is silent a long time.  Blake turns words over in his mind, until they've carried him so far away from the present that he starts when Avon says,

"It has been pleasant, here.  One of your few good ideas, Blake."

He can hear the grin, the joke in his voice, but he still says, quietly, "Avon." 

After a moment Blake turns to him.  Avon's face is expressionless.  The wind whips his hair into his face.  It's lighter than it was when they'd met, years ago: turning from dark to ashy brown with time.

"What?" Avon says.  His expression is blank.  Blake takes a deep breath.

 

~*~

 

In the next second, Avon knows.  Everything seems to bend and twist around them.  His heart works faster and his blood runs slower, and the sea is noisy in his ears. 

"Ah," he says, before Blake can start.  "I see."

They've never admitted the pull between them—it is undeniably there.  It has always been.  Avon had thought, after all this time…but Blake's expression, as he looks at him, is pained.  It's devastated.

"Blake," he says.

Blake turns and strolls away, to the edge of the bluffs.  There's a path there, leading down through scrubby grass and wildflowers and carpets of ice plant.  He follows it to a small beach below, and Avon follows him.

A rock wall to the right wades out into the ocean and forms a small harbour.  The waves are almost non-existent here, and the wind barely a murmur.  Blake is silent.

"You had something to say?" Avon prompts, impatient. 

"I asked Tarrant if you and he were rivals in everything."

He scoffs.  "Hardly."

"And what don't you two compete for?"

"I should have thought that was obvious." 

"Indulge me."

The fact that Blake refuses to get to the point, after apparently dragging them out here for the purpose of having this conversation, is frankly irritating.  "I wouldn't like to speak for Tarrant, naturally," Avon says.  "But Jenna's virtue is quite safe with me, I assure you."

"Is there anyone's that isn't?" Blake asks, and then sighs immediately.  "That's not what I meant."

" _Do_ go on, Blake, you're doing excellently so far," Avon snaps.  Blake walks a few steps away, toward the rocky wall of the bluff and a small stream that trickles down its face and falls into a pool on the beach, to run off into the sea. 

"This has to stop."

"What does?  I can think of all manner of things I wouldn't miss, if you'd put an end to them at last.  The constant moving, the constant attacks on the Federation, the constant declarations of our freedom when you _won't let us leave you_."

"I'm holding none of you here!" Blake shouts, frustrated, turning to glare. "Will you never stop throwing that idiotic accusation in my face?"

"Oh but you are!  Are you so stubbornly attached to your self-image of benevolence that you refuse to see it?"  Avon sneers at him.  "Or are you really that stupid?"   

"Damn you, Avon, I've never had the false image you insist on accusing me of!  Do you never get tired of being a bastard?" 

Fed up, Avon puts a hand to the centre of his chest and shoves him backwards, into the rock.  Blake seethes; his chest rises and falls under Avon's hand, and he snaps an arm out and knocks Avon's away. 

"All right," he says, voice stiff and angry.  "Apparently not." 

He pushes himself away from the wall, steps forward and past Avon, and Avon grabs a hold of his shirt and drags him back again.  Barks, "No."

Blake, glaring, snaps, "Are you going to let me go or not?" and Avon kisses him.  Presses up against him, pinning him against the rock in answer.  His boots sink into the sand.  Blake's lips are soft on his.  His hands are in Blake's hair. He draws in a breath and Blake's tongue is in his mouth.

"No Avon," Blake says.  "Don’t do this, damn it.  Don't do this now." 

But he takes Avon's face between his hands, and he kisses Avon: kisses him again, and again, and again.

 

~*~

 

Afterward Avon rolls off of Blake and lies sprawled on the sand, staring up at the sky.  Blake reaches lazily out after him, and Avon glances over as his hand settles possessively on his arm. 

"I see," Avon says, and smirks.  "That's the way it'll be, is it?  I'd always thought this might make you even more unbearable."

Blake draws in a long breath through his nose, and then curses.  He takes his hand back and runs it over his face, presses his palm to his forehead, rakes his fingers through his curls.

"Yes, I've had you now and I want you again," he snaps finally.  "Is that so dreadful?  Here I'd been hoping you might feel the same way."

"What, reciprocity lessens all manner of evils?"  Avon laughs.

Blake sighs.  "What do you want me to do, Avon?  I've told you you're free to leave, if you wish to."  The thought is horrible.  "Do you want me to _order_ you off the ship?  Would that suit your pride, that you could say you weren't running away?"

"No," Avon answers.  "I've told _you_ before, I want the _Liberator_.  I will not leave."

"Are you trying to order me off my _own_ ship?"

The sky over their heads is bright and clear as crystal.  The sand and pebbles are warm under their bodies; the water laps gently at their feet with the incoming tide.

"No," Avon says again, at last.  "No, after all this time, I think it's clear you and the ship are too inseparable.  Impossible to have one without the other."

Blake turns his head to look at Avon.

"And," he says, carefully, "you _do_ want the ship…"

"Don’t read too much into it, Blake."  Avon stands, buttons his trousers, brushes the sand away.  Looks down at Blake.

"I need an answer, Avon," Blake tells him, steadily, not moving.  "I can't go on not knowing whether you love me more than you hate me."

Avon stares at him, expression closed.  "That's a strong word," he says at last, slowly, "to toss about."

"Considering how passionate you are about disliking me, I might be insulted with anything less."

"Yes," Avon says.  Then he smiles a bit.  "You would."

"I need an answer, Avon."

"I can't give you one."

"Then I'll wait here until you can," Blake tells him.

That startles a laugh out of Avon, and for the first time, it carries no hint of bitterness.  "What, here in the sand?" he asks.  "Here on Hyperion One?"  He hesitates, and then holds out a hand; Blake takes it and gets to his feet.  Avon brushes sand out of his hair.  His expression is cool, but his hands are gentle. 

"It doesn't have to be here," Blake says.  "I understand Nigheralon Major has spectacular waterfalls."

"You'd get bored eventually, Blake, with nothing to do," Avon says.  "No Federation to fight.  No oppressed masses to free."

"Oh, I don't know," Blake answers.  They start back, toward the hotel and the _Liberator_.  "You could teach me to tango."

"I could teach you to tango anyway."  Avon pauses, steps closer, kisses Blake: closed-mouthed and chaste.  The look he gives Blake is steady.  "Is that answer enough for you?"

Blake reaches out and cups his face, his touch careful.  "For now," he allows.


End file.
